Pay attention boys and girls. I’ve come to learn that Lawrence Block has the rep as one of the few modern day noir authors that has successfully edged out from under the shadow of Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett. The is one of 18 (!) Matthew Scudder novels. Not that I should know all the modern day noir authors, but how did Block fly under my radar? This title came out in 1982.
Scudder is a former NYC cop who left the job because an errant bullet killed a little girl and his downward spiral destroyed his marraige. He now lives in a residential hotel and makes ends meet as an unlicensed PI while working oh so hard to keep from seeing life from the blackout-induced haze of a bottle of bourbon.
A friend of a friend connects Scudder with Kim Dakkinen, a Wisconsin-bred lovely who wants to get out of ‘the life.’ She is afraid to tell her pimp, so she asks Scudder to approach Chance with the news. Chance is terribly private person, a lover of African art and nothing like the comedic image of a pimp, but once Scudder meets him, the news is certainly OK with Chance. He wishes her well and appreciated her service. Life moves on.
Within a couple days, Kim is dead, hacked into smithereens by a machete in a downtown hotel. She wasn’t assaulted or robbed, just hacked to bits. The killer even took a shower afterwards and took the bloody towels. Obviously, the cops think Chance is behind the slaughter, but Chance hires Scudder to find her killer and an unlikely tango between Chance, Scudder, and the cops ensues.
A couple days later, another of Chance’s girls is dead of an apparent suicide. Is someone targeting Chance’s girls? A few days later, what appears to be a random transsexual waiting for sex change surgery is hacked to death just like Kim. The press is having a field day.
Scudder is trying to find the connection between the victims. A mink stole was left in Kim’s apartment and the hotel room, but a green ring, an emerald, was not on Kim’s hand. Scudder trades interviews and other clues with daily trips to AA, a fall off the wagon, and countless cups of coffee. On a venture into Harlem, he is mugged, but disarms the perp, knocks the kid out and breaks both the kid’s legs. A day or two later, a passerby after another AA meeting hints to Scudder that he should back off else he experiences the same broken legs.
It seems like so many PI stories are tales of an awfully flawed former cop. Scudder lives his days in “the smells of spilled booze and stale beer and urine, that dank tavern smell that welcomes you home.” The book is essentially told in 3parts: the day-to-day grind of AA, a certain level of hatred for what NYC has become, and of being in ‘the life’.” If books like this are reflections of the life of the writer, Mr. Block has seen a very nasty side of the human drama that he expertly exposes to his readers by seductively drawing us into the underbelly of New York. Block has another series about a contract killer named Keller, which I will explore next. But Scudder will again sit on my nightstand in the not too distant future.
East Coast Don
East Coast Don reviewed this book four years ago. If you’ve been following the blog, then you know we support the Burrito Boyz, a charity that feeds the homeless in downtown San Diego. We give out other items besides food, including water, toilet paper, and books. It was on a recent Sunday morning that I got engaged in conversation with one very well read homeless man who was carrying a book by Block, and he said his favorite novel by Block was this one, Eight Million Ways to Die. It’s a crime novel, but really, it’s a story about the struggle and agony of alcoholism. The book begins in a bar and ends in an AA meeting. Block writes as effectively as anyone about this disease, and he does it within the context of a very good crime story.
ReplyDelete